Unit 1 - Overview of Basic Concepts

In Front of the Classroom with Dr. Moore

Below is a message from Michael G. Moore, Ph.D., the author of this course, to introduce Module 1. Select your appropriate media format to listen to his message. If you have a slow connection, you should probably stay away from the online video and either select the file on your course CD (mod1.mov) or select the "audio only" format.

 

Reading Assignment for Module 1 (Units 1, 2, and 3)
Distance Education: A Systems View, Chapters 1, 2, and 3.

Unit 1 Objectives When you have completed this unit, you should be able to: Write a definition of distance education that you can explain to others. Differentiate among the main types of organization in the field. Explain why distance education has been considered important in the past and the present. Describe distance education as a system and describe the main components of such a system. Use the resources and understand the procedures to be used in the remainder of the course.

 

Introduction

Welcome to the course! This course is about distance education, and it is a distance education course! So in this course you will read and write, but you will also learn a lot about what it is like to be a distance learner through the experiences you will have in the course. My favorite way of explaining this is to say, "the process is also the content." Perhaps this is the first distance education course you have taken, but if not, it is likely to be one of the first. Therefore, in this first Unit, I want to begin by introducing you to the procedures of working in this medium, and the expectations I have about your role as a student. It's an important part of my teaching philosophy that you should feel as relaxed and comfortable as possible in this work. I know it is not possible to learn well if you are under too much stress, nor can you learn unless we provide an environment in which you feel you can take some chances in developing your own ideas and questions and  make a contribution based on your own experiences. I have tried to structure the course to provide this kind of environment, and so I hope you will enter into it intent on grabbing hold of all the opportunities for exploring the readings and Web sites to create your own knowledge--and even having fun as you study this intriguing field that is distance education. (I should caution you that you must have time to do this work. If you do not have about 10-12 hours a week for study you will be under stress and you might want to contact me or one of the other instructors to discuss your position.)

If, like me, you like to get an overview of where you will be going before you begin a project, I suggest you might--right now, take a look at the Course Syllabus (click on Course Menu to your left) if you haven't done so already. You will see that there are 12 "units" of study, covered at a rate of one unit per week, and you can also see the different topics that will be dealt with during these 12 weeks. The 12 units are organized in four "modules," and you will notice there is a pattern to each unit and module. Each module begins with a short video clip and ends with a written assignment. In the first week of each module you can concentrate on reading the set chapters from the text; in the second week you take part in a discussion of a question I will set in the "discussion message board," and in the third week you can prepare your written assignment for that module. This does not mean you can divide the work quite as neatly as it seems here, but this is my expectation of where you will concentrate your attention in each of the three weeks within each of the four modules. For the discussions, I will organize groups of about 10 students, once I see how many students are registered in the class. The module assignment will be posted to the Assignment message board. You can read the postings of fellow students, and if you wish to ask questions or make comments, you may do so, though this is not required. Your written assignments will be part of the "formative evaluation" of your progress. (This means that we do not evaluate your achievement only at the end of the course, since each of the scores for your assignments contributes to your final grade in the course.)

This course is not one in which you can just listen to the professor or read what he writes and then take an exam.  Here you are expected to help create your own knowledge both individually and collectively. Individually you will do this through your "independent study" (a core concept in distance education, as you will soon discover.) I begin my work with you knowing that you are adult learners, volunteering your time and money to study, and that you have your own motives for doing this and everyone has a different interest and background. My job is to provide you with a common selection of resources, structure, and guidance, as well as, on behalf of the institution, to evaluate your achievement in "mastering" the content of the course. To a considerable extent therefore, you are in charge of your own learning, which is what I mean when I say you make knowledge through your own "independent study." The second way you will make knowledge is through interaction with other students. As I have already explained, this will be mainly through reading your colleagues' assignments and by participating in the discussion forums. And, let me add, participating means sometimes "listening," sometimes "speaking," sometimes "following," and sometimes "leading." So please think about what it means to be a good member of a discussion group, and try to practice those skills here. (The quality of participation in discussion will also be evaluated, and will contribute to your final grade.)

 

A Word About Our Final Paper

I have already mentioned two parts of our evaluation system; i.e., the assignment and your contribution to discussions. The third part of the evaluation is the term paper. As the final assignment, as is customary in most graduate level courses, you will submit a paper--an original piece of composition that is your own creative intellectual effort reflecting what you have learned during the course. The limit in length we place on this is 4000 words, including references. You may be thinking about this, or you may even start to write it from the beginning of the course. (Tip: every unit of the course can be relevant to the question asked in this paper.)

Distance Education is About Change is the title of the last chapter of the textbook and is the title of your final paper. Choose two topics from the textbook (a topic can be a chapter title, a section or sub-section) and describe developments in those areas over the past two or three years. If you are able to suggest how these changes may affect distance education in future, do so.

You will be reminded to submit this at the end of the course. I look forward to reading your thoughts on this topic. Don't be anxious about it; just keep thinking about it, organize your thoughts and information about it, and enjoy writing it.

 

A Word About Reading and Other Resources

The textbook for this course was written by Moore and Kearsley primarily to support this course, and we will follow it closely.

You will see in the Menu (under Resources) that we have also assembled a short basic reading list to introduce you to the field of distance education. For some units there are also Supplementary Readings; where possible we will take you directly to these by a "hot-link." There is also a general bibliography organized for each unit, intended to be used when you want to research a particular topic in detail. You will also see a list of selected Web sites, and many of these also provide bibliographies and links to other resources. In the study guide for each unit (what you are reading now), we will provide a few specific suggestions regarding Web sites to visit.

One site that is of general interest, especially if you are studying in a developing country or have an interest in distance education in developing countries, is the World Bank Global DistEdNet (http://www1.worldbank.org/disted/). I led the team that developed this "knowledge system" for the World Bank, so it follows quite closely the conceptualization and the structure of both our textbook and this course. In a previous edition of ADTED 470 it was required reading, but we have dropped it now because while still relevant, it does not carry the number of Web-based readings that we think our students now require. However, I do hope you will visit it and see for yourself what help it may give you.

Further, we want to give you considerable time to explore on your own, for it is the opportunity to undertake searches according to personal interests that is one of the freedoms the Web provides far better than any of the previous technologies used in distance education, so we want to take full advantage of it.

Even more important is that you become familiar with the research journals. As beginners in the field you are not yet expected to be able to make your own selections from the journal literature, but it is important that you develop this understanding during this course because you will be expected to know the journal literature well enough to draw on it extensively in future courses. We have placed a list of the main journals in the Resource page on the course menu. You should begin with study of The American Journal of Distance Education (http://www.ajde.com). To get information about ordering AJDE, you can visit Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (http://www.leaonline.com/loi/ajde).  In some units we have selected an editorial from AJDE for discussion. Editorials are short and simple introductions to a topic of the day, and I suggest that you read them all at some time and not only read the ones we have picked out. You can find a list of the editorial topics in the Resources page on the course menu.

For further support in locating reference materials, we have Penn State's Virtual Reference Service. This service enables you to access Penn State reference librarians in real-time by using on-line chat and shared Web browsing capabilities. Look for the link to the Virtual Reference Service under the Resources link on our course menu.

To conclude this "preliminary note," let me wish you the very best of success in your efforts! I can assure you that the old adage is still true, you will get out of this in proportion to what you invest in it. (And now you could re-read everything I've written above and ask yourself, "If process is content, what did I learn already about teaching, learning, and the nature of knowledge in distance education?")

To continue to the next page, click on next at the top or bottom of the page (on the right side.)

Definitions

To get started I would like you to think about what you understand distance education to be.

When a term with specific meaning is used carelessly by people who don't know its real meaning, it ceases to be a means of communication and becomes a source of confusion. There is widespread confusion among educators about distance education, but one of the outcomes of this course is that in future you will not be among the confused or contribute to the confusion. Besides the improper use of terms, there are several different uses of the terminology related to distance education that reflect legitimate different perspectives. These are differences among educated users of the language. I want you to be among the educated. You need the conceptual understanding that allows you, when someone says or writes "distance education," to recognize if they know what they are talking about, and if you think they do, which of these legitimate perspectives they are taking.

Your Tasks:

Note: All hyperlinks will open in a new browser window.

1. Find a piece of paper and write down your own definition of distance education. Keep this nearby.
2. Read Distance Education: A Systems View, pages 1-3.
3. Go online to the American Journal of Distance Education Web site (http://www.ajde.com/Contents/vol5_3.htm#editorial) and read the editorial in Volume 5, Number 3: "Distance Education Theory."
4. Read the articles in Supplementary Readings by Garrison and Keegan.
5. Jot down or highlight what appear to be the key characteristics that define distance education.
6. Compare these with what you wrote.
7. If necessary, or if you want to, re-write your definition.

Comment: I imagine that in your first effort at the definition you said something about "technology" and perhaps you said something about "separation" of teachers and learners. If you said "separation" I congratulate you, because you already moved past the most common idea about distance education; i.e. that it is education with technology (I almost wrote "bells and whistles"!) Technology, of course, is essential in distance education, but technology is to distance education as a room (note I do not even say "classroom" since that indicates a certain social organization) is to other forms of education. After you read the text, I think you will agree that it is the  separation of learner and teacher that is the key characteristic of distance education. Not all education in which technology is used is distance education; but all education where teacher and learner are separated is distance education. Note that the textbook goes on to point out the related characteristics that make distance education distinctive. These are the "special techniques of course design and instruction" and "special organizational and administrative arrangements" made necessary by the separation of teacher and learner. Learning about these will take a lot of our time in this course.

A good way of testing whether a particular course is a distance education course is to ask where the principal teaching decisions are made. Who is deciding what is to be learned? When and how is it to be learned? When has learning been satisfactorily completed? If they are normally made in one place and communicated to the student by a technology, programs are defined as distance education.

 

Search the Web and find some other definitions of distance education. Are the definitions you find the same as ours? One place to start is the Distance Education Clearinghouse ( http://www.uwex.edu/disted/definition.html) and, if you wish, you can look for other leads in some of the materials provided in the Resources section.

 

---

Notes about icons used similarly throughout the course:

Although the task at hand is important in your learning, this icon is used to indicate that you do not have to submit the particular task.

This icon is used to indicate that you do have to submit the particular task.

 

To continue to the next page, click on next at the top or bottom of the page (on the right side.)

Dimensions of the Field

Now that you have an idea of the parameters of the field, let's try to sketch out some of the main features, for these will be the subject of our study for the rest of the course. An overview is provided in the remainder of Moore-Kearsley Chapter One. I would like you to read this in three parts.

 

First read Distance Education: A Systems View, pages 4-6: "Levels of Distance Education." Do this now and then come back to this page.

Comment: This section describes different organizational structures in which distance education programs are designed and delivered. It is very important to be able to recognize these different levels of organization. The problems, challenges, and opportunities of designing and delivering a course or program in one organizational type are significantly different from others, and it is essential to be able to recognize what kind of organization one is reading about before it is possible to understand what happens there. Stated most simply, "not all distance education organizations are equal." To appreciate the extent of this fact is a good early step towards understanding the field.

On the Web, find an example of a single mode institution, a dual mode institution, an individual teacher program, and a virtual university. Try to identify some of the characteristics of each.

 

 

Read Distance Education: A Systems View, pages 6 and 7.
This section helps you sort out the differences between other terms that are carelessly used and that are important for our study. These are "courses and programs" and "technology and media."

Think about these concepts. Don't just take them for granted as people uneducated in this field do (and so they may because they haven't taken a graduate level course of study!) Reflect in particular on the idea that: "an informative Web site, like an encyclopedia, is not in itself a course." Reflect on:  "A far bigger problem is the quality of the media that  are produced for distribution via the technology." Can you  explain this with an example?

 

Read Distance Education: A Systems View, pages 7 and 8: "Why distance education?"
Here Moore-Kearsley introduce some of the reasons why distance education has in the past been popular and why it is especially popular today.

Which of these explanations most closely fits the needs that brought you to distance education yourself? Is there a better explanation than any of these?

 

To continue to the next page, click on next at the top or bottom of the page (on the right side.)

Introducing the Systems View

Read Distance Education: A Systems View, pages 8-19. This section of Chapter One not only makes up the bulk of the chapter, but it also provides a conceptual framework for the remainder of the course. By reading this, you get an overview of the course and of the field. The idea of distance education as a field of study, as you will read later in this book, originated in the early 1970's and the pioneer thinkers about this shared a view of the value of using a systems approach.  Today a growing number of educators recognize the necessity to understand that distance education is a system with several key sub-systems, and that it is essential to study all of these, including making an attempt to understand their inter-relationship. (This may appear fairly obvious to you. Nowadays most texts about distance education are organized into sections dealing with theory, history, learning, teaching, policy and administration as well as technology; they have accepted and copied the systems view that was explained with regard to distance education  in the First Edition of this textbook.)

 

Read Distance Education: A Systems View, pages 19-22, "Distance Education is about to change." The closing section of this chapter draws your attention to something that by now should have become apparent to you. What you are studying here is far more than simply delivering educational programs by means of technology, or even a different way of organizing educational institutions to deliver educational programs in addition to those they traditionally offer. Distance education is a movement towards a new culture of learning and teaching, with fundamentally different distribution of human and other resources that adds up to "a Copernican revolution." And at the center of this system is ..... ? Yes of course, the student. A change as fundamental as this is not going to come about in a day. There is a lot of tacit opposition from many vested interests. Think about it.

 

Carefully reflect on Sally Johnstone's viewpoint about the future of distance education in Moore-Kearsley, page 22 and her comments in the audio clip below. Make reference to her comments in discussions and assignments where appropriate.

The full implications of what she is saying won't come fully into focus at this early stage of your study, but you can almost certainly recognize that some very significant developments are going on under that apparently simple guise of "distance education." I hope you will keep your senses alert, to pick up signs and evidence of these changes, as well as the actions of  counter-revolutionary forces that are resisting change. The picture will become more clear as we go forward to explore the evolution of the field, which is the subject of our Unit 2.

Transcript

 

This is the last page of the lesson. If you'd like to go back to a previous page, click previous at the top or bottom of the page. Click the Lessons tab at the top of the page to continue the course.